Annual Updates to AMA Impairment Guides Will Face Rough Waters Ahead

Impairment ratings will face intense scrutiny and potential upheaval as the American Medical Association embarks on an ambitious program to update its rating guides every year with extensive input from stakeholders. That was the word from participants in two web-based conferences last week that delved into the challenges of regularly updated impairment ratings. The AMA in the next few months plans to drop the hardback editions of its Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, which were last published in 2008 and are about 700 pages long, and go with a digital system that's intende...